The present invention relates to data collection for distribution control, more particularly in connection with wholesale/retail distribution of goods or like distribution control functions as adumbrated below, and provides substantial improvement in efficiency of data collection together with reduction of cost and time for associated data processing through maintenance of data collection events at decentralized locations in the first practical and economic fashion consistent with high volume and variety of data collection requirements.
Some retail merchandise data control systems include use of magnetic oxide coated (or otherwise suited to be encoded, e.g. by hole punching or marking with OCR readable notation) tickets tied to or associated with each piece of goods and encoded with pricing and inventory control data. A batch reader such as the commercially available MTR 200 reader may be used to retrieve data such as price and identification and inventory control numbers from a periodic accumulation of tickets and to store such information per se and/or aggregate totals. The equipment also reformats the data for use in EDP systems. Such equipment includes a mincomputer which provides operation control through preprogrammed commands or in response to commands in conversational mode entered through input/output terminal. The terminal is also utilized to display system status information for flash reports. The system may also include a re-mark terminal (e.g. for entry of price change information on the oxide coating). A tape or disk (or other data storage medium) data store sequentially records the information accumulated from ticket reading. This state of the art is further disclosed in the prior U.S. Pat. of common assignment herewith, Nos. 3,103,666, 3,517,612, 3,553,440, 3,626,462, 3,662,362, 3,689,065, 3,715,745, 3,727,031, 3,761,687, 3,774,904, 3,841,624, 3,742,844, 3,771,670, 3,797,386, 3,804,007, 3,806,715 relating to tickets and their marking and reading for distribution control and the like.
It is an important object of the invention to reduce shipping, handling and/or time delay involved in utilization of systems of the class described.
It is a further object of the invention to maximize in-store data collection consistent with the preceding object.
It is a further object of the invention to provide interactive operation easily mastered by relatively unskilled operators consistent with one or both of the preceding objects.
It is a further object of the invention to provide multi-ticket processing at high rates of tickets per hour consistent with one or more of the preceding objects.
It is a further object of the invention to allow keyed data entry consistent with one or more of the preceding objects.
It is a further object of the invention to accumulate subtotals and totals of data entered consistent with one or more of the preceding objects.